Béatrice Alcaraz

53 posts on the Energy Cities Blog

As in previous years, the event’s coorganisers – the urban community of Dunkirk, Bordeaux Métropole, Greater Geneva, and the ADEME – are calling for national and international contributions in order to build the schedule for the event. You want to (...)

Olivier Dehaese
Vice-President of Rennes Métropole in charge of the Energy & Climate Plan
http://metropole.rennes.fr/
Your council just adopted the new Climate Plan for Rennes Metropolitan Area. What are the Plan’s new directions ?
The (...)

Changing to manage change
Indispensable for accelerating the energy and social transition, change management involves adopting new ways of working ranging from the community to individual levels.
In collaboration with the Club Mobilisation (...)

Built at the heart of a recent and developing neighbourhood, Hadera’s Eco Park is a unique ecological park covering 86,111 yards.
Why "Eco Park" ?
The park was built with a special focus on sustainability and energy efficiency, while (...)

Mr Crastes, running an ambitious energy policy in a single area or country is complicated enough by itself. Why have you decided to join forces with the Swiss section of the conurbation to implement the energy transition?
The Greater Geneva (...)

We are looking for a communications student who loves to create engaging communications and who is at ease with writing journalistic style texts in English (French is a bonus). We’re sure you will enrich the communications team’s work with your (...)

Smart cities, an opportunity for sustainable development!
By Laurent Tonnerre, Deputy Mayor of the City of Lorient
New digital tools and uses offer a wealth of opportunities, provided, of course, they are not imposed on cities and are (...)

Soft loans - Residential sector (private residential buildings, social housing)
Home owners can borrow money to carry out energy-efficient renovation work in their homes for a lower interest rate than the standard market conditions.
There (...)

The City of Munich’s Department of Construction has introduced two new electrically powered street cleaning vehicles. The two utility vehicles will be used to empty waste bins in and around the city-center pedestrian zone. They will also be (...)

Mr Bauwens, since March 2017, you have been assisting the city of Ghent, Belgium, with a “commons transition” project. At a time when European towns and cities are working on their roadmaps towards a desirable future by 2050, what can you tell us (...)

The energy remunicipalisation initiative was immediately backed up with an ambitious energy transition and citizen engagement agenda and a highly symbolic partnership: the setting up of a green electricity and gas supplier jointly with (...)

A major event of energy transition stakeholders, the European conference gathers each year over 3,000 participants during 3 days.
The organisators - Greater Geneva, the Communauté urbaine de Dunkerque, Bordeaux Métropole and ADEME, in (...)

Not only has the city council set ambitious energy transition objectives – reducing energy use by 30% and CO2 emissions by 40% between 2005 and 2020 - but the first results are extremely encouraging, with a 20% drop in energy use and an 18% (...)

We are living in an era of rapidity and instantaneity. What is the impact of this acceleration on public action? Can a local government keep this “dictatorship of urgency” at bay?
To my knowledge, no one has better explained this (...)

And because many aspects of everyday life will be impacted by this 100% renewable energy vision, including housing, lighting, mobility, new technologies and consumption, fully engaging citizens and the various local stakeholders from the urban, (...)

The European energy system will have to undergo a major shift in order to transform the EU into decarbonized, sustainable and resilient society. Business-as-usual energy and climate policies will not be sufficient to reach this ambitious goal. A (...)

The European Energy Award® was an initiative launched by Switzerland, Austria and Germany (Land NordrheinWestfalen) in 2003. It’s a programme for planning and implementing energy and climate protection policy goals and mesures in municipalities. (...)

It also means that the local authority is involved in project governance and can ensure that the territory will benefit from the profits made. Opening capital up to citizen investment contributes to improving project acceptance. This is possible (...)

In Pamplona, a city of 196,000 inhabitants located in north-eastern Spain, the shift to renewable and decentralised energy has become a clear political objective since the elections in 2015.
Armando Cuenca is the Urban Ecology and Mobility (...)

New economic models and new players will thereby be able to enter the energy market.
Whereas cities and metropolitan areas have rarely kept themselves busy with their gas, electricity and fuel supplies in the past, the development of renewable (...)

[I devolve…]
Devolution is the shift of competences for public services from central government to sub-national or quasi-independent organisations. These organisations enjoy varying degrees of autonomy and have their own budget.
[You devolve…] (...)

To be credible, this political message must be backed up with “no-regret” short-term measures and medium-term planning documents defining interim targets, for example a Territorial Climate, Air and Energy Plan or an energy masterplan. This entails (...)

Five European champions are showing the way forward, all signatories to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, these five cities and regions aim to develop a coherent energy system based on energy efficiency and the optimum use of (...)

In most European countries, local authorities and their citizens have not seen a cent from the ETS revenues. Instead, many carbon intensive industries have benefited from the over-subsiding of carbon pollution through the ETS. This is the case (...)

A brief guide for cities 1- Identify where city money has been placed and shift it elsewhere
Identify the stocks (pension funds etc.) your city owns (directly or indirectly) in fossil fuel holdings and sell them. End your administration’s (...)

Hadera’s vision is to rais awareness amongst children about sustainability, energy efficiency and how they can protect the environment. The municipality is convinced that investing in education from preschool age will bear fruit.
The NZEB (...)

This decision is the result of the joint commitment by the Council of State and SIG to developing renewable energy sources, a vital condition for achieving the energy transition in Switzerland. After freeing itself from nuclear energy, the (...)

This event is the major Rendez-vous of energy transition stakeholders and it gathers each year more than 2,000 participants over 3 days.
Last year no less than 200 contributions were received and contributed to making the event a veritable (...)